Antibacterial agents are usually used for cosmetics, detergents, etc. for antiseptic reasons. Parabens are most often used as such antibacterial agents. Although parabens have low toxicity, their drawback is that the usage concentration range thereof is limited due to high skin irritation; therefore, the usage concentration of parabens in cosmetics is restricted to 1% or less. Further, in recent years, the number of people exhibiting an allergic reaction to parabens has been increasing. Since people exhibiting the allergic reaction are sensitive to parabens even at extremely low concentrations thereof, demand has grown for cosmetics that do not include parabens. However, cosmetics using no antibacterial agents have poor stability in storage and are difficult to manage as commercial products, and therefore demand has risen for antibacterial agents which are highly safe to the human body.
Accordingly, diol compounds such as alkanediols and alkyl glyceryl ethers and compounds obtained by adding an alkylene oxide to such diol compounds are known to be used as antibacterial agents (for example, see Patent Documents 1 to 3). These compounds, while demonstrating good performance as antibacterial agents, are characterized by high safety to the human body as compared with the parabens.